NCAA Football 12 Dynasty Problems Surface

With NCAA Football 12 having now been out for nearly a week reports are starting to come in on issues discovered within Dynasty mode. Outside of the exception of the absurd wait time for advancing Online Dynasty each ‘week’ and some problems progressing when utilizing Teambuilder squads the mode looked to be relatively clean on the surface with good sim stats and the Custom Conferences and Coaching Carousel working properly.

There has been much made within the community about a problem preventing users from advancing beyond week 15 in their dynasties both offline and online. Some thought has been given to the idea that controlling teams in conferences that don’t have championship games would lead to the problem being encountered. I went through under several different scenarios: offline vs online, head coach vs coordinator, team in conference with title game vs not, and created coach vs existing coach.

Of course there are many other factors that could be playing into an issue that will vary from user to user. Simply having simmed through seasons rather than playing them and actively recruiting would make the circumstances quite different. I was unable to replicate the issue but it does seem to be happening to several people so it’ll have to be monitored and further investigated to find the culprit and determine a solution.

Another discussion topic related specifically to Online Dynasty and that was hitting a wall in the offseason where no advancement could be made due to a bug in the Coaching Carousel. This one I did hit on the very first run through.

After the season my coach was offered a contract extension and also given the opportunity to “explore other options in the coaching carousel”. Upon choosing the latter the game threw up a “Transfer Failed” message which essentially boots you out of the Dynasty to the main menu. There were no issues with the server at the time so this was very specific to selecting the option to look at other coaching opportunities. After trying to get past that multiple times it was clear it was not going to happen so I chose to look at the contract offer and was able to re-up with my team and move forward.

As you can see below while in limbo the game presents the dynasty as though there is no attachment to a team. It may be an indication of why it is happening or it may have been designed to display this way.

The issue may relate just to expiring contracts or fired coaches. In a second Online Dynasty I completed the first season (of a three year contract) and had the chance to look through other jobs that had opened up. Then the decision had to be made to either stay with the school or take a new position. After deciding to stay I simmed through a second year and third year without coming up on the problem from earlier until the offseason when the contract expired. The same situation as in the other dynasty took place. The only choice was to re-up with the current team which defeats the purpose of the Coaching Carousel.

Even worse though is what it means to dynasties which have multiple people in them. While the commish may be able to proceed just by re-upping that may not be the case for others as the word is those users don’t have the ability to choose anything and therefore the dynasties stall completely.

The next major problem has to do with using Teambuilder squads within Online Dynasty. Attempting to download the dynasty file results in the console freezing up. Essentially no progress will be made in any TB dynasty as no users will be able to download the file.

It now appears also that injuries don’t carry over from week to week. Users have players return healthy the next game regardless of length of injury. This may only apply to regular users while commissioners face the true severity of injuries.

Other more minor issues relating to Dynasty mode in general are incorrect schedules and smearing of on-screen text. Working as a coordinator means putting a lot of trust into SuperSim and the result is defensive coordinators having a far easier go of it than offensive coordinators. This would seem heavily to have to do with the broken SuperSim which sways time of possession to the user side and going up against an at times inept CPU AI driven offense. Regardless it takes some fun out of what was an intriguing way to begin a career in Dynasty.

Considering the major offseason contract issue and Teambuilder freeze relates just to Online Dynasty there is some hope that it could be fixed server side. Otherwise there may be some reason to slow down and not reach the offseason in the meantime to avoid coming across that issue and no reason to attempt a dynasty using a created team. All of the reported faults with Dynasty both offline and online need to be looked into and addressed ASAP.